Ten Digit suite

2007

Ten Digit Suite, a set of ten hand-pulled silkscreen prints, is based on selected hand-embroidered fingerprints/huellas from the installation work LasDesaparecidas/Missing; protesting the violence with impunity against hundreds of “missing” and murdered women and girls, mostly factory workers in the US-owned assembly plants that line the Rio Grande in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico as a result of NAFTA. Residents of the small town of Tapalpa, Jalisco, Mexico---both men and women--- agreed to produce a collaborative textile. Their fingerprints were enlarged and transfer-printed onto unbleached cotton muslin, then embroidered by each participant. Their “prints” act as a protest against violence, in solidarity with the victims’ families, and as a memorial to the Ciudad Juarez victims.

Through the various steps of reproduction these images have morphed into nature-related abstractions suggestive of wasp’s nests, beehives, and pools of water. Ten single digits from ten different hands represent two full hands, hence: ten digits. Each print is titled after the name of the participant; together they serve as an alternate means of documenting this ephemeral installation.